The Silver Mage - Katharine Kerr [189]
Hope sprang up in his heart. Slowly, Rori swung his head her way. She uncrossed her paws and held one up, curling it to contemplate her claws.
“You’ll help Dalla?” he said.
“If you want me to. Say so, and I will.”
“I don’t want to lose you and your company forever.”
“Why would you? You were Rhodry Dragonfriend before, and you’ll be Rhodry Dragonfriend again.”
He felt his eyes, those traitorous human eyes, fill with tears. “When Evandar was going to work the change upon me, there in Cerr Cawnen, Dallandra warned me that I’d be throwing my human soul away. That’s what I wanted, then. I remembered too many evil things, and I wanted to forget them all.”
“Your soul seems a rather high price to pay to purge some evil memories.”
“Oh, I never paid it. Dalla was wrong. I’ve never been able to rid myself of that human soul, and now it’s calling me back.”
“Back to your true form?”
“Back to my true home.”
Arzosah lifted her wings as if she were about to spread them, then let them fall to her sides in a rustle like the wind in a thousand oaks. “So be it,” she said. “We’ll fly to Haen Marn together.”
“My thanks.” His voice broke, and he laid his head upon the hard rock. He heard her scales scrape on the ledge as she moved close to lick his face, comforting him as she’d done so often before.
“But do one last thing for me while you have wings,” she said. “Bid farewell to our son.”
Rori hesitated, thinking back to his other, mostly human sons. He’d never said farewell to them because he could never have told them why he was leaving without disinheriting them. This son, at least, could hear the truth.
“When the time comes, I will,” he said aloud. “In the morning, let’s fly to our lair. I’d like him to help guard the evacuation, anyway. Part of his heritage comes from the Westfolk, and part from Aberwyn, as well. He needs to become a friend to both.”
“So he does, and that’s the one doubt I have about your leaving us. How will he know whom he may trust and whom he should despise?”
“Ebañy will be here. He wants to repair the old watchtower, he tells me, to live in. He’ll teach Devar while he studies more dweomer.”
“Oh, fires and fumes! You mean I’ll be afflicted with that chattering elf for years to come?”
“Would you rather he stayed away? Or you could find a new lair away from the tower.”
Arzosah growled and turned her head away. He waited while she thought the matter through.
“For Devar’s sake, I can put up with your brother,” Arzosah said eventually. “Medea’s fond of his antics, and I suppose Mezza will be, too, once she sees his silly tricks and the like.”
“As long as you won’t see him as some kind of affliction.”
“I won’t, no.” All at once she rumbled with laughter. “Let me think about this new wretched annoyance! Somehow or other, it must be Evandar’s fault.”
Dallandra woke long before daylight. She fed Hildie’s son Frei, dressed, and wandered outside to look down at the town below. The lake mists were beginning to clear in a soft rising wind, and she could see in the windows of every house the gleam of candles and cooking fires. The town had woken early as well. She turned to the east and saw in the dark gray sky a sliver of pink dawn just breaking. When she turned her mind to Dari, she saw her daughter just waking in her hanging cradle. Nearby, Sidro sat up and rolled free of her blankets without waking Pir to tend the baby. Dallandra smiled at them all, then broke the vision. Soon she’d see them all again in the flesh.
As the sky brightened, she returned to Jahdo’s house and found it awake. The servants were setting out the last of the food while the family and guests stood around the table to eat rather than sit. Few people spoke, no one smiled. The farewell to their beloved city had begun. Dallandra took a chunk of bread and beckoned to Niffa and Salamander, who followed her out to the morning light.
They walked round the back of the house. Below, they could see the ruins of the old temple and, beyond that, down the steep hill, tangled brush and shrubs. The slope led down to the lake,